How do I make a sword look like its piercing snow?

[Guest]

So, I am new to photoshop, and I have this photo in which I tried to add a sword in the my hand.

But how do make it look like the sword is piercing the snow a little bit?

[Terri_Stevens · Accepted solution]

Fairly easy thing to do.

1) Make a selection of a small patch of snow and copy it to a new layer.

2) Select the move tool and move the snow over the tip of the sword and apply a slight Gaussian Blur to make it blend in.

3) Then make a very rough selection around part of the sword  and use the Transform Selection command to create the perspective of a shadow.

4) On a new layer fill the selection with a bluey grey color, apply another Gaussian Blur and make the layer blend mode 'Multiply' and that should produce a shadow.

[Guest]

Hey I do not understand the steps 3) and 4)

I did the blur stuff and now it looks like its piercing the snow!! Thanks for that!

But I dont understand what a "transfor selection command" is. I do know what "transform" is but how can I use that to create a shadow?

[Terri_Stevens]

Sorry I didn't explain it that well

1) make a selection

2) Go to the select menu and choose Transform Selection

3)Now you can transform the selection in the same way as any layer

3) Then it's just a matter of filling the selection with a color and using multiply blend mode to make it transparent.

[Guest]

Oh, thanks!! This is the final result. Is it good enough? Does it look like I am holding the sword? Also it would be great if you could give me any tips to improve my editing further

[Terri_Stevens]

I think that looks pretty good and quite realistic. A good place to learn Photoshop techniques is Phlearn. Most of the site is free and Aaron Nace is a very good teacher

https://phlearn.com/free-tutorials

[Guest]

oh! Thanks for the suggestion!!

[MrPW]

The shadow looks too grey. If you look at the other places the snow is in shadow it's a blue colour.

Not to mention that you and the sword are both in a shadow in the first place so you wouldn't really get a shadow like that. If your Dad (I'm guessing) was holding the sword he'd get a strong shadow because the sun is hitting him to cast it but since you're blocked from the sun by the shadow you're in, you won't.

[Terri_Stevens]

oh come on, we encourage beginners here. Yes the shadow would probably not be there in the real world in such a prominent way, but there is no sense in telling someone new to this about remapping the lighting across an entire image as they'll get confused. The snow itself has a blue tint coming from the sky so the area itself is not in full shadow, therefore a hint of a shadow is just possible-light might be coming through the branches of a tree for example, out of shot.. Besides everyone knows Excalibur glows in the dark